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Monday, April 11, 2005

Gorillaz do the Jim Morrison thing and turn their backs to the fans. Pure Rock and Roll!

Not too many cartoon characters are this funky. A few of them have tried their hand at making music. Hell, it’s a requirement for Mickey’s crew as everyone from Timone( “Hakuna Matata” is the jam, just ask your 1-4 year olds!), Aladdin, Mulan and the crab from The Little Mermaid have record deals. As talented as these animated lip syncers are, they are child’s play when compared to the pen and pixel Fab Four that is The Gorillaz!

Since the day they emerged from the creative ink well, Gorillaz have done more for the animated cool set than Roger Rabbit or his badly drawn girlfriend Jessica. She probably has the Gorillaz entire catalogue in her IPod as we speak. If she does, she is not alone. Real people really like the Gorillaz too, as they proved their chops with their groundbreaking self titled debut CD. Of course, behind every great animated man there is a great….production team and the Gorillaz are no different.

Gorillaz is the creation of Damon Albarn of Blur fame and animator Jamie Hewlett.Along with Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori,Tom Tom Club's Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, they crafted one of the most original groups ever, ask Guinness World Recordsif you don’t believe me. With such past hits like “Clint Eastwood”, “Tomorrow Comes Today” and “19-2000” (“Project Gotham Racing” #1 cruising song), the song singing simians are set to release more musical monkey business with their latest disc, “Demon Days”. The new video, “Feel Good Inc.” featuring De La Soul is out now. Group members 2D and Murdoc gave a few word about the new video and project.

2D: I think Gorillaz built a tower around themselves that they couldn't get out of. Of excess and hedonism. The video is based on this feeling. For a while it was great to be on the inside, but the party's got out of hand. It' s become like the Last days of Pompeii....a...er...Sodding Gommorah. The Feelgood Inc Tower represents this. The palace we built has become a prison. In the video I'm just waking up from this year-long hedonists dream, and I realise that maybe... the fruits of success have turned sour.

Noodle is outside of the Tower, in the pale morning-after light, sitting on the edge of this floating island. And you can see she knows what's happening. But people have to wake up to it themselves. So that's what the video is about; being trapped by the things you make, and realising everyone else is caught up in it. Using it. Just...they need their party to continue, to keep this thing afloat. The Tower of Babel.

Murdoc: Apart from the obvious thing, which is my gyrating hips, the coolest thing about the video would be the the hydraulics on this gig. Just for the windmill section alone cost about 3.5 million pounds. That's sterling. We had to buy a small island, make a mold of it and then scrape out all the insides. When that was done we filled the whole thing full of helium. Using the motor from the windmill we managed to get the thing to float, but it was an absolute bugger.

Demon Days will be released on 23rd May (11th May Japan, 24th May in the US), and will be preceeded by the single "Feel Good Inc", released 9th May.